As they were short on judges, I was almost running from event to event to help cover. Aside from one earlier break in the day, I was judging almost non-stop throughout the evening yesterday and the entire day today. Only at the last couple of finals did I have the free time to watch one of the events as a spectator (the finals of the extremely popular reader's theater competition). I found joy in watching all of them.
There are fifteen separate speaking events in Alaska's DDF season. Five are drama events--reader's theater, single character humorous, single character dramatic, duo acting, and pantomime. Of these, I only judged pantomime--which only had one group performing, so it was easy to rank them. Eight are forensics (although there is a bit of contention about whether the first three are drama or forensics)--dramatic interpretation, humorous interpretation, duet interpretation, original oration, informative/expository oration, domestic extemporaneous, foreign extemporaneous, and the extremely popular extemporaneous commentary (which requires the lest preparation and was Thanksgiving themed for this competition). Of these, I judged a dramatic interpretation, an informative/expository oration, and all three types of extemporaneous events. Three are debate events--Lincoln/Douglass (which is one on one with an ethical/philosophical basis), public forum (which is a paired event), and policy debate (which is a monster 90 minute paired event debate filled to the brim with quotations, statistics, and other references). I was a judge for all three. That means that, out of fifteen events, I judged nine of them and was able to watch one that I didn't judge.
I still have so much to learn, but I'm excited to get some of my own students into these competitions.